The AMC series “Preacher” is one of the most weirdly wonderful shows on television, a comic book adaptation as surreal on the screen as it was on the pages of the original material written and illustrated by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon.

But in a “Preacher” press conference at Comic-Con International on Friday afternoon its creators, who include actor Seth Rogen and his longtime friend and producing partner Evan Goldberg, insisted they were actually holding back a little bit. In the first two seasons, Jesse Custer — the preacher of the show’s title — befriended the foul-mouthed Irish vampire Cassidy, got into all manner of trouble with his longtime girlfriend Tulip, and all three tried to find God after he escaped from heaven and went on the lam on earth.

Asked why it had taken until the current third season to show him with his imaginary friend, a cowboy character inspired by Jesse’s love of John Wayne movies, Rogen laughed and said they felt they needed to hold back some of the oddball stuff so as not to overwhelm fans.

“At the start of the show there was so much weird (stuff) going we thought, ‘Do we also need the main guy with John Wayne as an imaginary friend?’” he said. “That might be one weird thing too far.”

In addition to Rogen, Goldberg and co-creator Sam Catlin, the three lead actors – Dominic Cooper, who plays Jesse, Ruth Negga, who is Tulip, and Joseph Gilgun, who plays Cassidy – were also at the press conference, sharing stories of their experiences on the show.

“I very much enjoyed this season,” Negga said. ” I feel like Tulip has really come into her own. She’s finding her own way, and solidified her sense of who she is.

“She’s kind of become her own superhero,” she said.

So far in season 3 the trio aren’t the tightly knit group that set out to find God in seasons 1 and 2. Tulip made it plain to Cassidy that her heart belongs to Jesse, though she cares for him as part of her informal family. And Jesse has pushed away both Tulip and Cassidy in an effort to protect them from the dangers of his family, and particularly Madame Marie L’Angelle, his bayou-dwelling, spell-casting grandmother.

“At the time he’s made a decision he feels very bad about,” Cooper said of Jesse so far this season. “He’s having to push them away from him in order to save them.”

Eventually, Cooper said, they will get back together. “But it gets worse before it gets better,” he said.

Asked a similar question Gilgun answered it differently, talking about his off-screen sense of this season compared to the previous.

“I got depressed last season,” Gilgun said. “I’ve got bipolar and it was a tough year. It’s not to say I wasn’t having a good time, too.

“There were moments in my career when I’ve had that and I feel I’ve forgotten how to act,” he said. “It’s terrifying.”

When it happened during season 2, Gilgun said he asked his show family, the creators and cast, for their feedback and support. In turn, he said he feels a responsibility to talk about his illness to help others.

“I do want to be honest as I can be about the mental health,” he said. “I’m in a good place this year. My chemicals are balanced. I’m exercising, doing all that (stuff). Eating sushi all the time, I’m actually sick of it.”

The show also strayed from the comics in the first seasons because the early books had sped through so much so quickly the creators felt it necessary to flesh out the characters and the world in which they lived. Now that they’ve established that, Goldberg said, they’re able to go back to the source material.

Though not so literally as to keep Cassidy the vice-loving vampire in the sunglasses that the comic book typically had him wear.

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.